Potatoes Make Junk Food —but They're Not Junk

Packages of Pringles potato chips are displayed on a shelf at a market on April 5, 2011 in San Francisco, California. (Getty Images)

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Corn and potatoes get a bad rap, due to the fact that we mainly consume them in junk food form. But corn and potatoes themselves are, Mark Bittman reminds us in the New York Times, "real food"—unlike, say, Pringles, which are potato chips that contain just 42% actual potato. That brand was just sold to Kellogg's for $2.7 billion last week, and Bittman uses the transaction as a reason to examine our relationship with the crops. "Don’t make the mistake of blaming the potato for Pringles," Bittman urges. "Nor should you blame corn for nachos or, for that matter, metal for guns."

Two-thirds of potatoes are now processed, Bittman writes, most for French fries—which means that though our potato consumption is way up, our consumption of fresh (aka "unprocessed, real") potatoes is way down. Potatoes in and of themselves contain just 22 calories per ounce; that number is 24 for corn. Compare that to the 150 calories contained in one ounce of Pringles, or the 139 calories contained in one ounce of corn chips. "We process so many real foods that we barely see them in a natural state," Bittman writes. If we could change that, we just might "look better, as would our health care bills, which in general rise along with Big Food’s influence and profits." (Read more Procter & Gamble stories.)

http://20potatoesaday.com/ A guy lived on a potato diet for two months, part political protest (school lunches were dropping potatoes due to ignorant people claiming they have "no nutrition") and part publicity stunt, he is Executive Director of the Washington State Potato Commission.

fractal

Feb 22, 2012 6:00 PM CST

Sorry, Ddhartma-- Once a potato is cooked, there is nothing nutritional about it---just starch that is one step away from being sugar. A raw potato does contain some vitamins that are destroyed in the cooking process.

osv

Feb 22, 2012 3:49 PM CST

once again the food NAZIS are at it again too bad they can't be put before a firing squad and rid all america of their communist tendencies